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Lawmakers in England and Wales are set to vote Friday on a bill to legalize assisted suicide — a potentially “colossal” change that Catholic leaders and other opponents of the legislation warn would normalize suicide and subject vulnerable people to enormous social pressure to end their lives, despite promised safeguards to curb such coercion. The proposed legislation — called the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill — would allow terminally ill adults judged to be mentally competent who have six months or less to live to end their lives with the approval of two doctors and a High Court judge. Introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, the bill seeks to amend the nation’s 1961 Suicide Act that, until now, has outlawed assisted suicide and carried a penalty of up to 14 years in prison. If ...

Pope cites ‘Amoris laetitia’ on doctrine in synodal implementation note Skip to content Pope Francis cited principles in his 2016 exhortation Amoris laetitia Monday, in a note calling for the synod on synodality’s final document to be implemented in dioceses worldwide. Pope Francis attends an ecumenical prayer vigil in St. Peter’s Square on Sept. 30, 2023. © Mazur/cbcew.org.uk. In a roughly 900-word text released Nov. 25, the pope stressed that the global synodal process didn’t end with the synod on synodality’s Oct. 27 closing Mass. He announced that when bishops prepare reports ahead of their ad limina visits to Rome — which take place roughly every five years — they will need to explain how they have implemented the final document in their dioceses. Share Reflecting on how local C...

Angelus Angelus Dómini nuntiávit Mariæ.Et concépit de Spíritu Sancto.Ave Maria… Ecce ancílla Dómini.Fiat mihi secúndum verbum tuum.Ave Maria… Et Verbum caro factum est.Et habitávit in nobis.Ave Maria… Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei génetrix.Ut digni efficiámur promissiónibus Christi. Orémus.Grátiam tuam, quǽsumus, Dómine,méntibus nostris infunde;ut qui, Ángelo nuntiánte, Christi Fílii tui incarnatiónem cognóvimus, per passiónem eius et crucem, ad resurrectiónis glóriam perducámur. Per eúndem Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen. Gloria Patri… (ter)Requiem aeternam… Benedictio Apostolica seu Papalis Dominus vobiscum.Et cum spiritu tuo.Sit nomen Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus,Pa ter, et Fi lius, et Spiritus Sanctus. Amen. The Angelus Prayer The Angel of the Lord d...

Francis names Cardinal Farrell as Vatican ‘pension czar’ Skip to content Pope Francis announced Thursday that he has appointed Cardinal Kevin Farrell as the sole director of the pension fund for the Holy See, covering former employees of both the Roman curia and the Vatican city state. Cardinal Kevin Farrell. Image via Vatican media. Francis took the decision, he said in a letter to the College of Cardinals and officials of curia, in the light of “a serious prospective imbalance of the fund” leaving it unable to meet its obligations. “Unfortunately,” said the pope, “at the end of the latest in-depth analyses carried out by independent experts, indicates a serious prospective imbalance of the fund, whose dimension tends to widen over time in the absence of interventions.” “In concrete terms...

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday formally lowered the threshold for Russia’s use of its nuclear weapons, a move that follows U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russian territory with American-supplied longer-range missiles. The new doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power. Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine fired six U.S.-made ATACMS missiles early Tuesday at a military facility in Russia’s Bryansk region that borders Ukraine, adding that air defenses shot down five of them and damaged one more. Ukraine’s military claimed the strike hit a Russian ammunition depot. While the doctrine envisions a possible nuclear response by Russia to such ...

DUBLIN (OSV News) — From Sydney to Santiago, Chile, Catholics across the globe are coming together this November to stand in solidarity with those who suffer for their faith. Persecution and discrimination against Christians around the world is getting worse — that’s the stark warning from the pontifical charity that works with thousands of vulnerable Christian communities in 140 countries. This coming Nov. 20 will mark “Red Wednesday,” a commemoration held annually by Aid to the Church in Need to highlight the fact that today one in seven Christians face extreme hostility, violence and repression because of their faith in Christ. In some countries, the observance is being extended throughout the week and is called a “Red Week.” To highlight the plight of persecuted Christians and raise aw...

PARIS (OSV News) — Miraculously missed by burning beams falling from the roof on April 15, 2019, and waiting for five years to make it back to Notre Dame Cathedral, the 14th-century statue of the Virgin of Paris made it back home Nov. 15, accompanied by thousands of Parisians praying, singing and lighting candles as they walked their Virgin to Paris’ most iconic church, restored after the fire. Since the fire, the statue, also referred to as Virgin and Child, or the Virgin of the Pillar, has been housed near the Louvre in the Church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, from where the procession started at 6 p.m. local time. For Auxiliary Bishop Philippe Marsset of Paris, the statue represents “a kind of miracle.” “Many Christians saw the fire as a sign of the purification God was asking his churc...

Nicaraguan regime exiles president of bishops’ conference Skip to content The president of the Nicaraguan Bishops’ Conference has been exiled by the Nicaraguan regime after he criticized a pro-regime mayor during a recent Mass.  Subscribe now Bishop Carlos Herrera, OFM, was exiled to Guatemala on Tuesday. Various local outlets confirmed the news after Herrera disappeared following a meeting with other Nicaraguan bishops in Managua, the country’s capital.  Herrera, who leads the Diocese of Jinotega, is the fourth Nicaraguan bishop to be exiled by the Nicaraguan regime.  Rolando Álvarez (bishop of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of Estelí) and Isidoro Mora (bishop of Siuna) were exiled in January 2024 to Rome along with a group of priests. Silvio Báez (auxiliary of Manag...

KOCHI, India — This month’s delayed priestly ordination of eight deacons of the Ernakulam Archdiocese of the Syro Malabar Church (SMC) has highlighted continuing divisions in the troubled archdiocese, which remains crippled by a bitter liturgical feud that erupted three years ago. The ordination ceremony — which was delayed from Christmas 2023 because of the liturgical dispute — took place at the archdiocese’s minor seminary on Nov. 4, with dozens of police deployed outside. And while more than 200 archdiocesan priests were in attendance, the majority of them boycotted the Mass led by Bishop Bosco Puthur, the administrator of the archdiocese, because of the liturgy he utilized.  Alongside of this liturgical dispute, many local clergy and laity have been further incensed over Bishop Pu...

LONDON (AP) — Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, head of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, resigned Tuesday after an investigation found that he failed to tell police about serial physical and sexual abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps as soon as he became aware of it. Pressure on Welby had been building since Thursday, when the archbishop’s refusal to accept responsibility for his failure to report the abuse in England and in Africa in 2013 kindled anger about a lack of accountability at the highest reaches of the church. By Tuesday afternoon, Welby acknowledged that mistake. “It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatizing period between 2013 and 2024,” Welby said in the ...

Angelus Angelus Dómini nuntiávit Mariæ.Et concépit de Spíritu Sancto.Ave Maria… Ecce ancílla Dómini.Fiat mihi secúndum verbum tuum.Ave Maria… Et Verbum caro factum est.Et habitávit in nobis.Ave Maria… Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei génetrix.Ut digni efficiámur promissiónibus Christi. Orémus.Grátiam tuam, quǽsumus, Dómine,méntibus nostris infunde;ut qui, Ángelo nuntiánte, Christi Fílii tui incarnatiónem cognóvimus, per passiónem eius et crucem, ad resurrectiónis glóriam perducámur. Per eúndem Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen. Gloria Patri… (ter)Requiem aeternam… Benedictio Apostolica seu Papalis Dominus vobiscum.Et cum spiritu tuo.Sit nomen Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus,Pa ter, et Fi lius, et Spiritus Sanctus. Amen. The Angelus Prayer The Angel of the Lord d...

A proposed pro-abortion amendment in Florida failed to pass on Tuesday, bringing an end to an effort to enshrine broad abortion access in the state constitution and serving abortion advocates with a major defeat in the 2024 election.  The failure of Amendment 4 offers a sharp rebuke to the pro-abortion lobby, which poured more than $100 million into Florida in an effort to enshrine abortion in the state constitution and negate the state’s Heartbeat Protection Act, one of the most pro-life laws in the country.  Prior to the Tuesday vote there were indications that the measure might fail. Less than a week before Election Day, polling indicated that support for the ballot measure was just short of the requisite 60% it needed to pass. By 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, with roughly 90% of the ...